The mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons has said she felt “horrified and violated” after fans of the billionaire used his AI tool, Grok, to create fake sexualised images of her by manipulating real pictures.

The writer and political strategist Ashley St Clair, who became estranged from Musk after the birth of their child in 2024, told the Guardian that supporters of the X owner were using the tool to create a form of revenge porn, and had even undressed a picture of her as a child.

Grok has come under fire from lawmakers and regulators worldwide after it emerged it had been used to virtually undress images of women and children, and show them in compromising sexualised positions. The widespread sexual abuse consists of X users asking Grok to manipulate pictures of fully clothed women to put them in bikinis, on their knees, and cover them in what looks like semen.

“I felt horrified, I felt violated, especially seeing my toddler’s backpack in the back of it,” St Clair said of an image in which she has been put into a bikini, turned around and bent over.

“It’s another tool of harassment. Consent is the whole issue. People are saying, well, it’s just a bikini, it’s not explicit. But it is a sexual offence to non-consensually undress a child.”

Acolytes of Musk had disliked her since she went public about his desire to build a “legion” of children, she said. Musk is the father of 13 other children, with three other women.

She said: “It’s funny, considering the most direct line I have and they don’t do anything. I have complained to X and they have not even removed a picture of me from when I was a child, which was undressed by Grok.”

The abuse started over the weekend, and she said that since it began she had been reporting it to X and Grok, to no avail. “The response time is getting longer as well,” she added. “When this first started, Grok was removing some of them.”

The manipulated image of her as a 14-year-old had been up for 12 hours by Monday afternoon. It and several other images highlighted by St Clair were finally removed after the Guardian sought comment from X.

She said: “Grok said it would not produce these images any more but they continued to get worse. People took pictures of me as a child and undressed me. There’s one where they undressed me and bent me over and in the background is my child’s backpack that he’s wearing right now. That really upsets me.”

St Clair said the abuse became worse when she publicly complained about her images being manipulated.

Since speaking out, other abuse victims have been in contact. She has been sent other disturbing sexual images the AI tool has made, including some of children. “Since I posted this I have been sent a six-year-old covered in what’s supposed to be semen,” said St Clair. “She was in a full dress. They said to put her in a blue bikini and cover her in what looks like semen.”

The mainstreaming of this abuse had been made possible by Grok, she said, adding: “I am also seeing images where they add bruises to women, beat them up, tie them up, mutilated. These sickos used to have to go to the dark depths of the internet and now it is on a mainstream social media app.”

St Clair believes this is being done to silence women and that the problem will get worse. This was because the AI was being “trained” on the prompts it was given by sexually abusive men, while women were being frightened off the platform by the abuse, she said.

“If you are a woman you can’t post a picture and you can’t speak or you risk this abuse,” she said. “It’s dangerous and I believe this is by design. You are supposed to feed AI humanity and thoughts and when you are doing things that particularly impact women and they don’t want to participate in it because they are being targeted, it means the AI is inherently going to be biased.”

She referred to it as a “civil rights issue” because “women do not have the ability to participate in and train the models the same as men when they are being targeted. The other LLMs are being trained on the internet too and it’s poisoning the well.”

Musk and his team could have stopped this widespread abuse of women in minutes, she said. “These people believe they are above the law, because they are. They don’t think they are going to get in trouble, they think they have no consequences.”

She added: “They are trying to expel women from the conversation. If you speak out, if you post a picture of yourself online, you are fair game for these people. The best way to shut a woman up is to abuse her.”

St Clair said she was considering legal action, and believed it could be classed as revenge porn under the new Take It Down Act in the US. The UK is in the process of banning the digital undressing of women, but the relevant law is yet to reach the statute book.

An X spokesperson said: “We take action against illegal content on X, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary. Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”